Denise Mina - Resolution

Without meaning to they had slept the night in the front room again, keeping Kilty with them, afraid to let her go home alone. They tried reassuring her, saying that her father clearly didn't understand what he had done, that they didn't even know for sure whether McGee was trafficking women. She was silent most of the night, watching Maureen and Leslie talk, glancing occasionally at the television but mostly just sitting on the floor, looking out of the window and smoking their duty-frees. She didn't want to join Maureen in a very big drink and was still quiet when she left this morning to get ready for her now reluctant date with Josh.

Maureen had fallen asleep feeling slightly high: if she was right about McGee and everyone else was wrong, maybe she was right about what to do about Michael. Maybe Doyle would make it all right and she'd walk away from it unscathed. This morning she was feeling secretly excited, hoping they'd find evidence against Si. She was betting her soul on whatever Maddie said.

Maureen and Leslie followed the road past the shopping center and around to the side of the station. The hill was steep and they were both damp by the time they stopped outside the Holy Cross community hall, across the road from a disused, blackened kirk. The complex of rooms centered on a gravel square with a concrete slab path running around it. Two plain women waited outside on the steps, one in a navy blue summer dress with short sleeves, the other in a white blouse and peach skirt. As Maureen and Leslie approached, the women turned and their faces fell a little: Maureen smelled of stale drink, and they both looked tired and crumpled.

"Hello," said Maureen, ignoring the implied snub, taking an outstretched hand and shaking it. "I'm Maureen."

Leslie took the other hand. "Hiya," she said, and pumped the hand. "We're looking for Maddie?"

"Inside," said the summer dress.

The small room was unadorned and empty, apart from a couple of microphones on a raised stage and about twenty chairs set out in rows in front of it. An elderly black woman sat alone one row back from the front, dressed in an overcoat and matching hat with her handbag on her knee. A spindly young man was tuning up his electric guitar at the side of the stage and another man was standing in front of three adoring women, chatting and nodding, blinking slowly and holding photocopied sheets of paper. He saw them and broke away from the group, coming over with his hand outstretched, his eyes contracting in a practiced smile that hid everything beneath. "Hi," he said, closing his eyes like a smug cat as he shook their hands. "I'm Jack Gibb. I'm the pastor. I lead the services around here, not that that makes me anything – anyone." He had a Sheffield accent. It had escaped neither Maureen's nor Leslie's attention that, despite thinning brown hair on top, Jack Gibb had a scrawny wee ponytail. Alone, neither would have objected ferociously to it but in their collective consciousness a ponytail on a man was the greatest fashion crime of all.

"We're looking for a girl called Maddie who comes here," said Leslie stiffly, trying not to look at Maureen.

"Has she spoken to you?" said Jack Gibb, pastor and nobody. "About the church?"

"Oh," said Maureen, "no, not really, it was a separate thing."

Jack wasn't pleased but he nodded none the less. He pointed them to a small underweight woman sitting on the stage listening, enraptured, to the guitarist tuning up, swaying back and forth. "She may not want to talk just now – the service is about to start."

Maddie had short brown hair, cut in a functional style, and was dressed with great reserve: a long-sleeved nylon blouse with a modest vest underneath, an A-line black skirt that came below the knee and moccasins with flesh-colored soles. She looked like a foreigner who had been misinformed about the dress code.

She looked up as they approached her, hopeful at first. She had large brown eyes with slashed wrinkles under them like tidemarks. In her ears she wore small gold hoops, sitting loosely in long drooping holes used to far heavier earrings.

The guitarist stopped tuning up and watched Maureen and Leslie approach. Maddie stood up as if she were in trouble. Maureen introduced herself and asked if they could have a word. Maddie bristled, making it clear that people had been having words with her for a long time and it was never to tell her she had been voted Queen of the May. She shuffled to the side, moving away from the guitarist. "What's it about?" Her voice was low and quiet.

"A lassie called Alison told us about you," said Maureen. "She wears bunches?"

"We're not the police," said Leslie.

"Who are ye, well?"

"It's a long story. Look, can we talk to you?"

Maddie wasn't sure.

"I know you're not doing that now," said Maureen, "but we're trying to find out about something and you're the only person who might know about it."

"What is it?"

"It's about a lady called Ella the Flash. She worked the Gorbals for years and years."

It was as nonthreatening a story as Maureen could think of and Maddie nodded. "How d'you know Ella?" she asked.

"We work in Paddy's, her stall's near us."

Maddie nodded again. Behind her the service was starting. The expected deluge of sinners and converts hadn't come and the seven members took their places, only three in the audience, most of them on stage. No one seemed to have spoken to the black woman.

"If ye stay for the service we could talk afterwards?" Maddie smiled. Leslie and Maureen agreed reluctantly and followed her into the front row of seats.

Jack Gibb led the singing from the photocopied sheets, accompanied by the inappropriate electric guitar. Although there were plenty to go round, Maddie offered to share her hymn sheet with Leslie and Maureen and leaned in so that they couldn't avoid singing along. It was a poor rendition of whatever the song was. The black woman behind them sang with gusto but the Scots, unused to singing without libation, muttered and stumbled along to the tune. Jack Gibb shut his eyes and sang loudly but not well. The song petered out and they all put down their sheets as Gibb raised a hand on either side of his head, swayed from side to side, and started telling them in a strange, strangled voice that Jesus was a good guy.

The Jesus-is-a-good-guy stuff went on for some time and Maureen, not quite recovered from the night before, dearly wanted to sit down. She was feeling distinctly faint when Maddie broke away from her side and clambered up on the stage, a glassy look in her eye, and took the microphone from Jack. She gave a speech in the same strangled voice as Jack, rocking back and forth, egged on by the rest of them shouting intermittent encouragement. Maddie's speech went on for a good five minutes and Jack had to ask her to give someone else a chance but the gist of it was that Maddie used to be unhappy and selfish but now she wasn't and it was great. Thank you, Jesus. She didn't mention a life of sin or shame or guilt but Maureen supposed that those were Catholic conventions anyway. Some other people said they had been wee shites as well, but that they weren't anymore, and then they all prayed that hundreds of people would come to their service. Amen. Another song, badly mauled, ended the service and Maureen was never so glad to be a heathen as when the doors opened at the back of the room and let in the air. How anyone could do this every Sunday morning was beyond her.

Maddie was making the refreshments and they had to wait around while everyone sipped tea and ate chewy scones someone had made, chatting about how great the service had been and how nice the scones were. The middle-aged black woman left as soon as the service was over, leaving a grand total of seven worshippers and two people who wanted to talk to Maddie.